Q] Can you take us through the insights of your research on which you based the Discovery Plus campaign? What were your objectives for the campaign?
As part of the research where we were trying to understand the kind of product that we should cater for India, two things primarily came forth. One was that Discovery has tremendous trust in consumer mind space, parents and young adults. The second thing that came through was that people actually download Discovery Plus to learn something, which eventually helps them earn respect in their life, society, corporate life, big situations, etc. When we narrowed down on specific situation in terms of watching Discovery content, the first word was ‘interesting’. From here we got the line ‘agar app interesting dekhoge, to interesting sochoge’, which became the cornerstone of our campaign. Taproot further helped us build this insight and we came up with the line ‘it’s rare to be interesting but it’s interesting to be rare’. And that’s where we picked on interesting as the functional payoff of the product and the emotional payoff is that it helps you win some of the big moments in life.
Q] How are you communicating this message to your audience? What are the various media formats that you’re using to reach out to your audience?
We actually launched a significant TV campaign for two weeks across our network of 10 channels. We also ran the campaign on GECs, news and movie channels to build brand proposition. On the digital front, we actually doubled up on platforms like YouTube and
Q] Each medium has its own purpose, but which medium has been the most effective for you in terms of driving instant response from your audience?
Yes, different mediums serve different purposes. On the brand side, a mix of TV and YouTube has helped us build brand consideration and recall, and on the performance marketing side, Facebook has really helped us in acquiring active users and subscribers at scale.
Q] What have been some of the content viewership trends that you have noticed on Discovery Plus in the last 4-5 months?
Four big drivers of our content have been science, adventure, auto and food. Adventure has traditionally been our strength. However, we were pleasantly surprised with science and auto content being consumed in a big way during the lockdown period. On the passion community side, auto and investigation were the two ones that were sort of popping out as the most watched content.
Q] In terms of monetization of this content, what have you noticed? Has the surge of viewership translated into revenues?
We are actually a subscription product but we also have an AVOD layer. On the subscription side, we have done exceedingly well. We are actually ahead of our estimates and are looking at plans to amplify it further. On the advertising front, the plan was to actually keep the first three months advertising free and engage with users and understanding their consumption patterns. But we have been in talks with key partners and will be making some announcements soon.
Q] So, what are the plans for Discovery Plus going ahead?
When we had launched, India was a very mobile heavy market. We actually prioritized android, iOS and mobile web. But very quickly we got feedback from viewers to be present on the big screen because of which we actually launched Fire TV app three weeks ago. Now we’re launching Android TV next week. So, we will be present on more such platforms and there are also deeper partnerships with players like Fire TV that we are going to enter into. We also plan to make exciting announcements on the content space very soon
